The Success Nuggets

Success Nuggets #33 - Redefining Success and Empowering the Next Generation with Esther O'Callaghan OBE

• David Abel • Season 2 • Episode 13

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What if you had the chance to redefine your life by leaving school at 16 and still making a significant impact on the world? Esther O'Callaghan, OBE, did just that and joins us to share her extraordinary journey from working in care homes and supporting those with special educational needs to founding Hundo, a platform that equips young people for careers in the Web3 and metaverse spaces. 

Esther's early experiences in Manchester with youth music projects and Big Issue in the North laid the foundation for her mission to empower the next generation. Listen as she recounts her transformation from a wide-eyed founder to a determined entrepreneur, dedicated to creating meaningful opportunities for young people globally. 

Her insights are not just lessons in business but in life, highlighting how each step, no matter how small, leads to purposeful change.

Esther's inspiring journey from overcoming a life-changing back injury to redefining success as a triathlon coach underscores perseverance, aligning life's journey with core values, and achieving self-defined triumph over adversity, in an unmissable conversation with a true visionary.

Nugget of the day: "Success is no accident. It is hard work, perseverance, learning, studying, sacrifice and most of all, love of what you are doing or learning to do."

Speaker 1:

Thank you about the patterns that drive progress. Get ready to dive into a world of insights and inspiration. This is the Success Nuggets Podcast, with the founder of the Digital Lightbulb and your host, david Abel.

Speaker 3:

My next guest is a real rock star. Esther O'Callaghan, obe, is the founder and CEO of Hundo, an innovative platform focused on upskilling young people for careers in Web3 and the metaverse, enabling them to be able to earn and learn wherever they are in the world. Hello Esther.

Speaker 2:

Nice to see you again. It has been a while.

Speaker 3:

It's great. It's great to see you. Thanks for coming on. You've been a number one target guest since we started and for anyone who doesn't know Esther a little bit, like me, she left school at 16 and just went straight into work and Esther's purpose and the mission she's completed have actually built quite a legacy for someone still relatively young. Relatively, yeah. How did you get started after school? What were the first projects you got into and where were you based?

Speaker 2:

So I was born in Blackpool, which in the north of England in case there's anyone in the audience that isn't from the UK, although it is quite famous globally for all the wrong reasons, I think but yeah, very run down seaside town and I left school at 16 because I had to go to work. So I was a free school, meals, kid, single, single parent family. So it was largely miserable. It wasn't really an option. So I did everything from waitressing and bar work, which was fun, to working in care homes and nursing homes and with the elderly, which was sometimes fun, sometimes challenging, window cleaning, paper rounds, retail, basically whatever to pay the bills. But then I also got a job at Willem Fylde College supporting students with special educational needs. So I was a support worker and then kind of leapfrogged into an entirely different career through a job advert. I packed a lot into a very short space of time and then when I was 19 I landed in Manchester.

Speaker 3:

So that was great, that you tried all those different things, and I think the caring side of you was already starting to shine out, which is beautiful. Then, over the next sort of five years in Manchester, you got involved in some really exciting projects that were again focusing around the youth, focusing around the community. Were we starting to see an early community leader in those days already?

Speaker 2:

It's always really easy to look back, as though there was some kind of thread or some kind of pattern. It's one of my favourite tracks of all time Baz Luhrmann, you Know Wear Sunscreen, because it is that thing like most people didn't know what they wanted to do and some of the most interesting 40-year-olds still don't know, and I, somewhat horrifyingly, find myself now in the category of the 40-year-olds who still don't know. But I think it's more around. I like to do things where you've actually done something, where you can actually go oh look, that happened, because I did that. Making things happen is my vibe. It's always, I think, been around young people. That much is clear now that, I think, been around young people that much is clear now that I think you can say is is almost a golden thread. But I think that's largely driven from exactly what we were talking about, because I know what that journey is like and I know how hard it is and I know how challenging it can be. So those five years in Manchester were incredibly transformational, at the same as all of the cool stuff.

Speaker 2:

I was also running youth music projects. You know we ran after school workshops and trying to tackle the problem of young people not being in education, training or employment. It's my childhood and my experience as a young person that I think has galvanised the work. You know you don't find missions, I think they find you. I always say that I've worked at some of the hardest edges of what happens to young people when they don't have opportunity and they don't have support From learning support you're right to right the way through to male suicide, teenage self-harm, homelessness. You know I worked at Big Issue in the North when I first moved to Manchester. So, seen what happens to children and young people as adults and I think it's kind of we need to do better. We just need to figure this out and do better and I think that's kind of become the mission. I don't think tackling youth issues is as complex or difficult as adults would have you believe we just need to do better we do.

Speaker 3:

I think it's a great mission of peace as well. So for anyone listening in, you know esther's been going five, ten, fifteen years getting involved right in the community, like it's a big issue. But you, you've got to move into business at some point perhaps, and so now you're in a slightly different environment. The heart's still in the same place, but you've got to adapt to business. What kind of bigger projects now, with hundo and your adaption to business, have you found?

Speaker 2:

it's been one of the hardest, longest learning curves of my life. I think five years ago, which is when I started hundo, I was a very naive, starry-eyed founder who thought that venture capital actually existed in the world to actually invest in things that do make a difference. And, of course, five years later, I'm a battle-hardened entrepreneur. So that's what the last five years has done to me. But but yeah, it's, it's the same premise. You know, hundo's journey almost actually the blueprint for hundo, although I didn't know it at the time started, you know, back in manchester when we were doing the music workshops for kids. And then, all the way through you blue, you know, it becomes a blueprint. You learn what works. And so with hundo, hundo started because I was working with the recruitment industry, looking at how you tackle youth and employment. So there is a recurring theme here. And then we set up a charity, you know, raised a load of money, supported 7 7,000 young people, but the figures are just going up and up and up, you know. So it's fine. You are making a difference to individual lives. There is absolute value in that you can break into generational poverty in a generation and that means that their kids and grandkids, you know, don't have to go through that same journey, and I say that as a parent. You know my son doesn't know poverty and never will. You know it is possible in individual lives. But we've just seen recently with the UK figures and it's not unique to the UK Youth and employment rates globally are going the wrong way. They are going up and we're facing a whole new set of circumstances that simply didn't exist pre-COVID. We set a fundo during COVID because we'd been working with young people, you know, taking them to offices, helping them get work, and of course, all that shut down overnight and everything moved online, and so it was absolutely catastrophic for young people. They lost their jobs at three to five times the rate of every other age group and they were already in low pay anyway. So it was not you know. It was just, you know, when a similar thing happened for a different reason, and so I was like, okay, let's try and set up a platform so that we can scale what we know works, and that was kind of the genesis of Hundo. Then we went on a five-year journey which brings us, yeah, literally up to date and looking at how to tackle the problem at scale, and I think the only way that you can do that is by having a platform. It's not a silver bullet solution. It's not a silver bullet solution. It's part of an ecosystem.

Speaker 2:

You know, for me, I don't see a world where everybody learns everything online and nothing in a classroom. I think we have to get to a place where we recognize that, like blended learning and different ways of learning are much more effective. At the moment, we're still living in a post-war industrial education system that is no longer fit for purpose. Ai is only one of many emerging technologies that is completely disrupting everything. The last time we saw that level of disruption was the advent of social media and all of the.

Speaker 2:

You know it's a great thing and it's an awful thing. You know, in equal measures. You know, when you look at the impacts of young people over the last 20 years, there's a mental health, sense of self. All of that has been changed and now we're seeing, with all this kind of emerging technology, what are the job prospects? Because a degree no longer guarantees you a job. So if you go, a really highly qualified young person is no longer guaranteed a job. What happens to the kids who are three and four? You know, and down from. I imagine if I come back on here in 10 years I would I'll probably still be saying exactly the same thing. You know, but no but.

Speaker 3:

I I do hope so to some degree that you're still pushing for the next topic or the next boundary to break. Yeah, I wonder if there's a way that the older crowd who are listening here can listen into this, because they probably don't think about youth unemployment. They're worried about their own pensions and kpis. But one thing I've learned is when people come together, they find people with things in common and then the age becomes irrelevant. Is the more kind of mentoring or group helpful things people can do to to speak to the youth these days?

Speaker 2:

yeah, I think it's. It wasn't, it was. It was actually a good friend of mine and she talked about the need for corporate parenting. So you have a situation where people in the workplace of our age and older go into work and the young people in the business are almost like a foreign land, but at home they've got sons, daughters, nieces, nephews, you know, like the grandkids even you know, and it's almost like young people need that kind of wraparound, support and care. They are entering the environment for which it is so alien to them because they have been through institutionalised education for 11 years and then beyond, if they actually carry on, you know, post-16. So you're talking about what your 24-year-old has been institutionalized from, like the age of five and then the end of this workplace, and then everybody somehow thinks that everybody's going to be able to figure that out.

Speaker 2:

And I think the idea that you can actually use intergenerational support as a, as an almost like a power. So you have like, yeah, young people are, of course they're more digital savvy. They grew up with it. We're the generation that kind of was analog and then moved into digital. For them it's second nature. But what we built into Hundo was not just digital, and that's where an older generation has way more experience and can be really, really valuable in helping younger people actually navigate their way through quite an alien world.

Speaker 3:

Absolutely, and I still learn from octogenarians. Now. I think we should all continue. There's no end to it. So there's a good message there, one who wants to support with youth unemployment. You know, speak to them, help each other out and, as Esther said, in your companies, build those cultures. They're just human beings as well, and we can all get on. Okay, esther, let's move on a little bit into your incredible mindset. You've completed Biathlons, yeah, so are you of an athlete's mindset? How did that all come about?

Speaker 2:

So well, unfortunately, you can't get away from youth and employment. So we did a load of charity fundraising, basically. So that's where it came from and so, but, but what was great for me was I discovered triathlon and discovered something that I actually loved, and then got a terrible back injury which put me out of action shortly thereafter. So I went from 2017 being finding this new thing and I was like, wow, you know what is this? Because I'd been completely written off the sport at school. And then I was like, wow, I'm 37 now, like the fittest I've ever been in the whole of my life. And then it's like, oh, no, bang, now you have like herniated discs and now you can't walk properly for a year.

Speaker 2:

So my you know my intrepid mindset like I'm very drunk because I was in a lot of pain for quite some time. And then they were like, well, you might not be able to walk properly again, so you can kind of forget about swimming, cycling and running long distances. So I was like, okay, great, but I love it. So what can I do? And so I did my British triathlon qualifications, cause I was like, well, if I can't, if I can't do it, I can help other people do it. So the truth is I am a much better coach than I'll ever be an athlete, you know. But for me, I love the, I love the lifestyle, I love the challenge and I love how you feel. You know, you feel really good, like being that fit is great, but in terms of like race day and the finish line, I don't really care. So I'm never gonna. You know, there's always going to be someone faster than me, there's always going to be somebody. So I'm just like but I like the lifestyle, I like the training, but I really love coaching.

Speaker 3:

So that was a happy byproduct of what was an inordinately difficult time yeah, awesome, cool, okay for anyone who's aspiring to be like yourself, you know, starting young. What sort of patterns do you think create progress? What advice could you give?

Speaker 2:

you know there's so much advice, there are so many books out there and things, and I, and honestly, for me, you just have to start and you're going to make mistakes and you're going to wonder some days why you're doing it, and I think it's you're. I think the journey is unique. You know, I see a lot of this on linked and I think it's I think the journey is unique. You know, I see a lot of this on LinkedIn. You know where it's like I did this and I did that and the other and I'm like no one lives in anybody else's shoes.

Speaker 2:

You know your, your situation, and where your business can be virtually identical to somebody else's, the situation that you find yourself in can be entirely different, and so the decisions, the choices, the barriers you know all the things that you face are relatively unique to you. It's more about the things that are underneath it. You know it's like you're going to need a lot of grit. You know you're going to need to find reasons to get up some days when it's really hard and you don't want to, and I'm not saying that as though that was like years and years ago. You know that it's a when you step out to do anything that you haven't done before or that may challenge you, it is inevitably scary as hell. It is where you will feel vulnerable. It is where you will question yourself.

Speaker 2:

But self-worth and self-esteem are not the same thing.

Speaker 2:

People are dealing with lots and lots of things in the background that aren't always evident, and so I would say don't look at the success stories that are going to make you feel small and like you're failing.

Speaker 2:

Actually, look at the things that inspire me are the people who've who fail actually and get up and go again and go again and go again, because it's so hard. It's so hard to do that, and I, I, I just have endless respect, you know, for people who do that. I mean, we're on digital light bulb and, of course, it's the famous Edison quote where he said he found 99 ways to not, you know, do like, but when, and it's true. You know, we, we as a society, we seem to kind of love success, as though, and we seem to like forget the cost and the sacrifice and everything that goes with that, and and I think you have to define your own success it's not's not as successful. What is successful to me is knowing that hundreds of thousands of young people get something that helps them. That's my metric and that's the only metric I care about, and so find your own path, but mostly, just get started and accept it's going to be a ride.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, that's the one I heard as well. You know the crushing when it fails feels worse, however much you emotionally over invest in it. Yeah, as well. So that's a good one to watch because that can be really painful when you've put your heart into something and you know yeah, I'd say it.

Speaker 2:

You know, obviously I'm, you know, I'm one of many founders and it's like there are no easy answers. I'm not a massive fan of social media for this reason, because I think it amplifies this and that, and if you're there and you're just, you know, just trying to get through the day, it can be really disempowering. You know, to kind of see everybody else's success, because it belies the truth, which is there was a lot of failure that went behind that there was, there's a lot of other stuff that isn't factored, and I really think that needs to be more apparent. Don't believe the hype. I guess is there yes, that's the one.

Speaker 3:

We got a lot of music references here today. Right then, hit us with your one golden, if you would.

Speaker 2:

Ester o'gallen young people don't create youth and employment systems do.

Speaker 3:

Okay, so it's been amazing having you on. We will have you on again, definitely in 10 years time, maybe sooner, and we wish you so much of all the best. And if anyone's following where should they come and follow and support as well?

Speaker 2:

You can only find me on LinkedIn. So yeah, estro Callaghan should come up. Yeah, brilliant.

Speaker 3:

For the listeners. Tune in again. More incredible guests coming as we close out 2024. What a great year, and I'm going to be the first to wish you a happy new year, Esther, I guess To you 2025.

Speaker 1:

Join David and his incredible guests next time on the Success Nuggets podcast and to find out more, visit OneGoldenNuggetcom. Thank you for listening you.